The one question that’ll help you discover what you REALLY want

This question was posed to me in a playground by my friend Lisa about five years ago after I’d told her my idea to start Fox in Flats.

I’d enthusiastically outlined my thoughts on what the site might be like and the type of content it’d contain, and had then promptly run through all the reasons why it was probably best left in the ‘too hard’ basket.

Reasons like “How could I find the time with two little kids at home?” and “I have no real online experience,” and “How embarrassing would it be if it’s a failure?”

She looked me in the eye and asked that question:

“How much do you want it?”

It made me take a moment to pause, and discover I really DID want it. I wanted it badly. I wanted to try at least. I wanted to give it a “Good Aussie Go.”

So I broke down the tasks I’d need to do to get things running and started tackling them one by one.

I chipped away at it while my kids were having afternoon naps and while they were asleep at night. I carved out an hour here, and an hour there on the weekends while their Dad took them to the beach. I borrowed books from the library and taught myself how to do HTML so I could build a website from scratch, because I had no money to pay a pro to do that for me. And I figured that if it didn’t work there was no need to be embarrassed. At least I would have tried. And at least I could be proud that I stopped talking about the idea and put it into action.

Years later I’m still doing Fox in Flats. It’s now my full-time job – a job that I love. If not for that question from Lisa back then, I truly doubt I would have gotten off my butt to try. Because sometimes it’s easier to come up with all the reasons why you can’t do something, instead of all the reasons you can.

So I wonder for you:

is there something you’ve dreamed of doing but have not taken action on yet?

It might be a new business like me, or a dream holiday, or losing a couple of kgs. Perhaps it’s worth asking yourself how much you really want it? And this could just inspire you to get going, and start chipping away toward that goal.

But similarly, I think it’s also worth asking that question of yourself,

and deciding that maybe you don’t want it.

I took a long hard look at my ‘to do list’ recently. I usually work to a few: a daily list, a weekly list, and a longer-term list that has a bunch of bigger projects roughly scoped out. And I realised that some of those bigger projects that had been sitting there half-finished or never started had to go. Because I discovered that I didn’t really want to do them. And they’d been weighing me down. So I simply ran a black line through them with a flourish. I realised that for now at least, I don’t really want to finish that novel, I’m not interested in doing another 10k run, and those pesky extra kgs can stay because frankly, I’m not willing to give up on red wine and stinky cheese. And I reckon this is going to now free me up to truly focus on the things I want to do.

So maybe ask yourself the same of all those things banging around in your mind, or scrawled onto your to-do lists, and see what you discover about yourself?

How much do you want it?

I’d love to hear what you discover about yourself as a result: what have you decided to focus on, and what’re you gonna draw a big black texta line through?